Treat Day Wednesday–Fruit Pops

The warm days are upon us, oh joy.  Yup, I say that with quiet disdain. I’m a true Canadian, I don’t like the really hot weather.  However, my kids love it!

My kids also love popsicles so I made a two different kinds.  First up was Pineapple-Mango and secondly, I made a little Memorial Day Pops, strawberry, yogurt and blueberries.

These are super simple. 

The Pineapple-Mango were just pureed with a little apple juice in the blender.  I added a little sugar to boost the sweetness, but that’s it. 

The Red, White and Blue are made of strawberry compote, greek yogurt and blueberry compote.  A compote is also pretty simple.  In a small saucepan, add 1 cup of berries, a tablespoon of sugar and a tablespoon of water.    Heat on low until the berries break down.  Let cool.  Spoon into mold with a yogurt layer in the middle.  Freeze and voila!

So no need to have the heavy sugar snack, fruit sometimes is always the best!

Thanks for looking!

Vacation–a well needed (deserved) rest!

Sometimes you just gotta go and after the past 6 months we needed to go.  

Let’s see, in the last year I’ve cracked a rib and then broke it, both by coughing. Two brutal bouts of bronchitis, hence the rib.  Then I got fleas.  Yup you read that one right.  New puppy brought fleas of which, apparently, I’m very very allergic.  And then when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, my body revolted a little farther and botched 3 discs.  One bulge, one herniated and one torn.  Go big or go home I say!  After two unsuccessful epidurals to ease the pain, I opted for surgery to fix the herniation.  It worked but apparently my body wasn’t done with me yet.  While in physio therapy I heard a pop and all the pain over the last 6 months returned in one fell swoop.  Drugged out of my tree and three days later (of which I remember maybe an hour or two) an emergency surgery was required.

I’m now 5 weeks post 2nd operation and feel absolutely great.  No pain baby!  Now I just need to get a thumbs up from the surgeon so I can at least start doing some sort of exercise.  I don’t expect to be bench pressing 200 lbs, well ever, but it would be nice to do more than walk (YAWN).  I’m hoping for swimming!

So back to our vacation…Rob and I had decided after the first surgery to go away but then after the second surgery we really needed to go away. Spring break in our area is the first week in April.  We have been going down to Florida for the week since we moved down here.  Why not, my parents have a house in Sarasota, it’s warmer and above all they have a pool!  So off we went, just me and the girls and spent the week with my mum.

The drive down is pretty easy.  We stop in Savannah which is about half way.  Once in Florida the girls pretty much spend every waking hour in the pool.  Now the problem with that, is this:

Don’t worry, she wore her goggles every day after that. 

Now it’s not all lounging about the pool.  We spent a fun filled day at the most magical place on earth (east coast style)!

Then after a week I left the kids with my mum and met Rob in Miami and from there we flew down to the Dominican Republic.  Paradise!

We stayed at the Gran Bahia Principe Bavaro and huge resort in Punta Cana.  It was beautiful. Now that being said I need to disclose it’s an all-inclusive.  Not that there is anything wrong with all-inclusive but that usually means just ok food. But what we didn’t expect was the total lack of customer service, even though we stayed in their Diamond club.  A la carte meant you could pick your main meal but the rest was buffet.  We had to go back up to the reception every day to book are dinners because they kept “forgetting” to do it for us, thank god the drinks were free!  These are mango daiquiris, delish!

Now lounging about the beach and doing nothing was great for the first three days, then I needed to do something.  So I took Rob zip lining.  It was amazing.  Your probably wondering how I could go after two surgeries and my answer was how could I not.  It’s not like I was hanging from my arms LOL.  You are strapped in and basically sitting.  Now there is nothing glamorous about this but I can now check it off my bucket list!

Most nights we had a couple drinks in the bar after dinner and went to bed.  Crazy right? I mean the point of the vacation was to sleep and catch up on rest (check)  Our last night we met two girls from Pittsburgh (Hey Kasey and Chelsea, I may have had a few drinks so I apologize if I got them wrong )They were hockey fans too, so Rob could talk hockey all night.  (He’s telling everyone I picked him up two hot girls).  We ended up having dinner with them and closing the restaurant.  It was a great end to the vacation.  Girls, if you are reading, I hope you got your salad and wings at Chillis in Charlotte on your way home!

Now back to reality, in more ways than one!

I’m back, feeling good and ready to go.  My nephew’s birthday is this week and he asked if I could make cookies for the kids in his class and I was happy to do it.  So I made him these:

I also made some lion cookies for my friend Nicole, from Salsa Sweets for her daughter’s birthday this week too.  The theme was safari and I just wanted to make lions and came up with these sweet cookies:

Next up I made my light boxes.  I’ve been wanting to ever since I read Mike at Semi Sweet’s blog post on his.  So simple but I made it easier, at least for me.  So meet Sunny and Cher, my two new light boxes. Now when the sun doesn’t come out or I finish after it goes down, I can now take decent pictures.  (ok, after this one) YAY!!! I also have all the step by step for this, so will do a tutorial as well. I’m so going to do his reversible table top too!

Today is also Treat Day!  With the temperatures in the 80s I thought frozen and went with frozen yogurt pops.

• favourite yogurt
• fruit of choice

Freeze and enjoy! Rowan did

So thanks for coming by and listening!

See you soon!

Treat Day Wednesday–Chocolate Cheesecake Pops

Sorry, I’m late.  Right day just a little later than normal.

I’ll get right to it, Rob’s away.  And when Rob usually goes away for more than a day,  I end up doing something to myself.  Whether it’s conscious effort or not, there you go.  This week has been a doozy.  I have slipped a disc (yes I picked up the soap in the shower :)) and then I woke up with what could be described as a second nose.  I’m a 16 year old girl again.  And then yesterday I poured scalding hot tea all over my legs that left a beauty 2nd degree burn on my right knee.  Rob comes home Friday, I’m hoping I’ll survive.  I think I’ll order pizza tonight to be on the safe side.

So with it also being Wednesday and all I felt I should try to stay away from the stove or oven for today’s treat,  just to be safe.  The temperature is also at 85 and with the humidity that makes it over 100 degrees F out, so I went with popsicles.

These are super simple all the way through.  Right up until you try to get them out of the popsicle molds, then you need to be a rocket scientist (or maybe that’s just me).

Recipe: (don’t be scared)

• 1 pkg jello chocolate pudding
• 1 pkg jello cheesecake pudding
• 3 1/2 cups milk

1. Mix together (I know it’s crazy)
2. When it starts to thicken, stick into popsicle molds and freeze 24 hours.
3. Attempt to take them out of molds, it took me forever but so worth it once they came out.

And there you have it.  Simple and Delish!

Again Rob is home on Friday so if you don’t hear from me by then,  I’ve fallen and I can’t get up LOL

Thanks for looking!

Treat Day Wednesday–Cookies & Cream Pops

To continue with the ongoing trend of loving all things frozen on a stick in our house, I decided that I’d again make popsicles for Treat Day.

These ones were way too easy.  I had a package of cook & serve vanilla pudding and some chocolate graham crackers.  I made the pudding, I crushed the cookies, I combined and I froze.  Can’t lie to you, as you know, these are really good.  So simple.  One drawback, they look gross.  Those were Rowan’s words.  But as I’ve always said, never judge a book by it’s cover or in this case a food by it’s appearance, you should try before you pass your judgment.  Well one lick in and not another word was said.  SUCCESS!

I really do love easy treats and what’s even the best part is that they are a relatively low calorie treat.  YAY!

Thanks for looking!

Treat Day Wednesday–Strawberry Vanilla Swirl Popsicles

And you thought I’d be through with strawberries.  Well I didn’t pick today’s treat, Rowan did.

Both Abby and Rowan have been all about the popsicles and ice cream these days.  When I was flipping through Pinterest, I saw these popsicles.

This great little website Our Best Bites has so many wonderful ideas, especially for kids.

When scrolling through the several popsicle ideas, Rowan stopped me and said, those ones mommy!

So here we are on Treat Day and I give you these strawberry and cream pops!

Recipe: adapted by Our Best Bites

• 1 small box instant vanilla pudding (now I used cook and serve pudding b/c that’s what I had in the pantry.  I just made it as per directions but with just 1 cup of milk.)
• 1 C milk
• 6oz vanilla yogurt
• 12 medium strawberries (about 1 3/4-2 C roughly chopped)
• 2-3 T sugar

1. remove stems from berries and pulse with 2 T sugar in a food processor until completely smooth. Taste and add more sugar if needed. You should have just over a cup of puree. Set aside.
2. In a blender combine pudding, yogurt, and milk and blend until combined. Layer or swirl the pudding mixture with the strawberry mixture in popsicle molds and freeze until solid. (Here’s what I did.  I cooked the pudding, cooled it in an ice bath, added the yogurt and then continued)
3. Enjoy!

This is a great idea for the kids to help with.  Rowan put the sticks in and helped swirl the strawberries into cream!  So many giggles and smiles, this was a really fun treat!

Thanks for looking!

Linking with:
Cast Party Wednesday
Mrs Fox's Sweets Party
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